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Counterpoint: No accountability for taxpayer dollars given to private schools

State Journal Register

Friday, August 11, 2017 | Article | Kathi Griffin

Education Funding (36a)

Editor’s Note: In this week’s point/counterpoint, writers address this question: Should the state of Illinois start a tax credit scholarship program?

A solid foundation for life starts with these key ingredients — love, education, health and safety.

None of these things should require that a child be born to money.

Working people in Illinois have been under attack for years and the victims, the collateral damage from that war, includes social services, state agencies, colleges and universities, and vendors paid by the state. All these institutions and the people they serve have suffered greatly.

And now that war has come to a head over the funding of our public schools. The man elected to help solve Illinois’ problems has made things worse by trying to play regions of our state against each other.

When in central Illinois, Gov. Bruce Rauner describes the proposed funding plan, Senate Bill 1, as “a Chicago bailout.” Yet, he tells Chicago audiences that rural districts are losing students and shouldn’t be funded at the same amounts.

So, he vetoed SB 1 and added many amendments — things that would fundamentally change the way Illinois functions, including providing incentives for smaller towns to slash programs that encourage businesses to improve town squares through tax increment financing districts.

In exchange for overriding that amendatory veto, some lawmakers are hoping Illinois will pass a “tax credit program” for schools — also known as vouchers.

In an age where accountability means everything — where standards are being implemented to ensure that students are being taught what they need to succeed in life — why would we, as a state, take public money and give it to private schools that have no accountability? Private schools are not required to account for how these tax dollars are spent. There is no transparency.

Private schools don’t have to take every student. They can pick and choose. Nine out of 10 students are educated in public schools. Why starve a system that’s fair to all?

We need to improve the schools we have.

Neighborhood public schools are our best bet for jump-starting our kids on the path to their best futures. This is where we can inspire their natural curiosity — where our kids will find a band teacher who can teach chemistry, a counselor to help them through their hardest times and most difficult choices, a staff that welcomes their family into the school, sports, robotics, debate, theater and resources that create a lifelong love of learning.

Studies show vouchers don’t help the students they are advertised to help the most. Test scores show neutral, lower achievement, or, in a few cases, very modest positive effects.

Worse yet, in many cases, taxpayer money for vouchers isn’t used to help those it’s billed as helping: students whose public school education is somehow deficient. In Indiana, for example, the Indiana Department of Education statistics show that more than half of all voucher students never attended public school. Students in struggling schools aren’t switching to private schools. Parents who can afford private schools are applying for tax dollars to subsidize private tuition.

That’s not fair.

Instead of taking away money from public schools and handing it over to private schools, we should do what we know works. We should invest in our schools — create trauma-informed systems so our students who need help the most receive it. We should decrease class sizes and boost physical activity because it increases brain function.

The members of the Illinois Education Association, who teach and staff schools throughout the state, are experts on what will work in our classrooms. They don’t take their cues from anti-union, anti-tax, anti-public education groups dedicated to destroying public education. Our members are working one on one with students every single day. If you want to know how to help students in our state, just ask.

We’re here to help. Ask our kids. They’ll tell you.

— Kathi Griffin is the president of the Illinois Education Association. The IEA is made up of more than 135,000 teachers, school staff, higher education faculty and staff, retired educators and college students preparing to become teachers, and works to improve the professional lives of its members and lives of students they serve.